Unable to convert a string to an integer variable from DateTaken attribute on a JPG file

Question

I have a script which is using the EXIF data from a JPG file to find the DateTaken value. Once found, place the data in $Year and $Month

Answer 1

A better approach to working with dates is to convert the date string to an actual DateTime object, which provides all the information you're looking for:

$culture = [Globalization.CultureInfo]::InvariantCulture
$pattern = 'dd\/MM\/yyyy'

$datestring = $objFolder.GetDetailsOf($File, 12).Split(' ')[0]
$datetaken  = [DateTime]::ParseExact($datestring, $pattern, $culture)

$year      = $datetaken.Year
$month     = $datetaken.Month              # month (numeric)
$monthname = $datetaken.ToString('MMMM')   # month name

Assuming that the date is followed by a time in the format HH:mm:ss you could extend the code to handle the time as well:

$culture = [Globalization.CultureInfo]::InvariantCulture
$pattern = 'dd\/MM\/yyyy HH:mm:ss'

$datestring = $objFolder.GetDetailsOf($File, 12)
$timestamp  = [DateTime]::ParseExact($datestring, $pattern, $culture)

$year      = $timestamp.Year
$month     = $timestamp.Month              # month (numeric)
$monthname = $timestamp.ToString('MMMM')   # month name
$hour      = $timestamp.Hour
...

Answer 2

The date-and-time string returned by $objFolder.GetDetailsOf($File, 12) contains invisible control characters^[1], for reasons unknown to me.

You can strip them as follows, after which your code should work:

# Remove the formatting control characters from the string, by replacing
# all instances of Unicode character category \p{Cf} with the empty string.
# For more info on Unicode categories, see http://www.regular-expressions.info/unicode.html
$dateTimeStr = $objFolder.GetDetailsOf($File, 12) -replace '\p{Cf}'

[int] $yeartaken = $dateTimeStr.Split("/")[2].Split(" ")[0]
[int] $month = $dateTimeStr.Split("/")[1]
$monthname = (Get-Culture).DateTimeFormat.GetMonthName($month)

As an aside, on a general note: Ansgar Wiecher's answer shows more robust date-time string parsing techniques.

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^{[1] In my test file's metadata I found instances of Unicode control characters U+200E (LEFT-TO-RIGHT MARK) and U+200F (RIGHT-TO-LEFT MARK)}